Idre Fjäll, Dalarna County, Sweden

4ReviewAndWin 5:00 PM Jul 20, 2020

Great summer hiking with dramatic nature
I’ve done a video review for this holiday as well that you’ll find on YouTube. The Swedish mountains are a popular holiday destination in both summertime and wintertime. In the summer, people go there for hiking, fishing and mountain biking, and in the winter for skiing and ice fishing. I had a week’s hiking holiday with my family in July 2020, where we hired a cabin in Idre fjall resort. This Is my review of it. Idre fjall is located near the village Idre and close to the Norwegian border, about five and a half hours drive from Stockholm. The last hour of the drive the roads are narrow, and you have to look out for reindeers on the road. Reindeers are common in this area and if you spend one hour here you are almost guaranteed to see at least one. In the centre of the resort you find a pretty good supermarket, an outdoor sports shop, a bike hire center, and also a shop that sells reindeer meat, but that was closed the whole time we were there. A little walk from the centre there’s an activity centre where you can play bowling and shuffle board. There is also an arcade games room and an indoor swimming pool. Because of the pandemic, the outdoor pool was not open. I should also mention the beautiful view of the mountains in the area, some of which still have snow on the top of them in July. If you want to hire a mountain bike, you have to book it at least two weeks before you go, since they are popular. Some of the opening times at the resort were quite bad. For instance, the chairlift that takes you around the area, closed at 4 pm. The supermarket is open between 10 am to 6 pm and was closed on Sundays. Around the center there are cabins, apartments, ski slopes, and also a hotel that was built by the famous Swedish skier from the 90s, Pernilla Wiberg. The cabin we hired was a semi-detached cabin with a open plan kitchen and lounge, and two separate bedrooms with bunk beds. At each end of the house there were sleeping lofts. The kids were very excited about the sleeping lofts and thought they were cosy. In the cabin there’s also a dishwasher and a drying cupboard. If you want to wash clothes there’s a laundrette on site. We were pleased with our cabin and the standard was as we expected. The cabin sleeps up to eight people, but it would be a bit cramped and there’s only one bathroom. In the day we were mainly hiking. We looked at the weather forecast every day, before we planned what to do the next day, because the weather changes a lot in the mountains. One minute it can rain and be very cold and next it can be sunny and warm. With warm I mean around 18 degrees which isn’t that hot. We tried to time in our excursions around the rain. Longer excursions when the weather was supposed to be good and shorter more local excursions if it was going to rain. We did okay. We didn’t have a whole day with rain so sometimes we hiked in the morning before the rain started. On the first day we went up to the top of mount Stadjan. It was steep and we had to stop every so often to catch our breath. It took us about five hours there and back. We were quite exhausted when we came back to our cabin. On the second day we travelled to Njupeskar, which is Sweden’s highest waterfall. From the car park there was a nice little walk to the waterfall, and the forest you have to walk through looked a bit mysterious. We were all a bit stiff in our bodies after the day before, so it was nice to have a easier walk. The parking in Njupeskar is chaotic, where people park everywhere, because the car park is not big enough for the amount of people visiting. On the third day it was supposed to rain after lunch, so we walked in the morning to a nearby lake. It did rain on us, but we were nearly home when it started. On the fourth day we took our car to Grövelsjon, which was about 50 minutes drive. We parked by the lake grovelsjon and from there we hiked to a place called Silverfallet which is a small waterfall with drinkable water. The route is about 8 kilometres. We cooked our lunch by the waterfall. On the fifth day we hiked on the mountain Nipfjallet which is about 15 minutes drive from Idre fjall. There’s a strange stretch of the road where you think the road in front of you is sloping downwards but when you put your car in neutral it starts rolling backwards. After Nipfjallet we played bowling and mini golf back at Idre fjall. The sixth day we spent our day local to rest our legs and shoulders. We went to a place where they supposed to have farm animals, but the only animals we saw was some sheep. We had a waffle with ice cream and cloudberry jam in the cafe. After that we went to lake Burusjon. They have nice sandy beach, but the water and weather was to cold to swim in. It was still nice and a perfect place to have a picnic. We started to pack our bags in the evening of that day, ready to go home in the morning. For lunch we cooked food on a camping kitchen every day. Food like meatballs, pyttipanna, grilled sandwiches, hot dog etc. The food tastes much better when it’s cooked in the wild when you’re out hiking. When you find running water it is safe to drink because the water is clean. The clothes I recommend you bring, are comfortable walking boots, comfortable trousers with some level of water protection, a waterproof and windproof jacket, a fleece jumper and hat and gloves. To summarise: we liked our holiday and thought the cabin was good. We are not experienced hikers but we enjoyed it. The weather was cold, between 12 to 18 degrees but we were quite lucky that it didn’t rain so much. When we hiked it was actually good that the weather was cold. The opening times at the resort were bad. We can recommend this holiday if you like some exercise and see dramatic nature. It was nice to spend time in the mountains with my family without any distractions from phones and iPads. We payed about 550 euros for the cabin for a week.

3Phayao13 5:00 PM Jan 3, 2022

Feels like it's unusually few slopes open despite chilly December.
I think I have never seen so many people in the area before and it is not positive for me as a guest. When then only a fraction of the mountain is open, there are easy queues, countless lift stops on the main lift does not make it better. When we still give feedback, the 5.5 km track was in miserable condition and hardly worth a penny in track fee. Our accommodation PW Hotel is starting to feel stuffy and not at all like you read at the entrance to Idre, "Fjällvärlden's coziest hotel". The restaurant visit to the same hotel lacked almost everything one could wish for and the breakfast is far appealing. On the positive side, however, was the new back restaurant Rotisserie, which offered a simple but tasty menu. However, the entire travel company voted for the dinner at Kött & Fiskbaren to be the biggest treasure. Good, affordable and superb reception by some gentlemen in management.